(Photo credit: U.S. State Dept.)
Human rights activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in New York City Saturday with his wife, Yuan Weijing, and their two children. Chen and Yuan spent Sunday making final arrangements to study law and English at New York University, according to NYU law professor Jerome Cohen. Chen also took time to sit out in the sun, something he told Cohen he hadn’t done “for many, many years.”
A dozen members of Chen’s extended family, however, remain in jail or under house arrest in China. Most seriously, his nephew, Chen Kegui, remains in jail in Shandong Province, charged with attempted homicide for wounding one of ten intruders who broke into his father’s house in the middle of the night and beat him. The younger Chen could be executed if found guilty. Authorities confiscated the license of his original lawyer, and threatened to confiscate the license of a second lawyer who volunteered to defend him.
